Weekend Update

So my students are going to art for a half hour, and I finally have a quiet moment at school. I forgot to update from last weekend, so here's a rundown of what happened...

On Friday we spent the day at school teaching. They have morning "parades" on Fridays which is really an assembly. The whole school (prep through year 11) got to attend the Year 12 assembly which is similar to our graduation, only not as big. It was fun seeing all the students together, but it was definitely hot with everyone packed in their assembly hall/gym.

Friday evening, we decided to catch a movie at the theatre in South Bank where we are staying. Most of us saw New Moon, the new Twilight movie, but since tickets were sold out, we had to see the last show at 9:30 and didn't get home until after midnight. We wondered around the river boardwalk for 2 hours prior since we had gotten there hoping for an earlier show and didn't want to walk home. It was fun relaxing at one of the numerous outdoor cafes and enjoying the ocean breeze.

Saturday we took a bus to the Gold Coast which is about an hour on the south side of Brisbane. Gold Coast is a group of beautiful beaches all along the Pacific Ocean, and we stayed in Surfer's Paradise area. This would have been wonderful except for one thing: Schoolies. We found out from the news and teachers that Year 12 students finish their year 3 weeks before the rest of the school. In order to celebrate, the ENTIRE east coast of Australia heads to Surfer's Paradise for 2 week-long festivities. Although the Sydney schools still had another week of school, we got to spend the weekend enjoying the beach with 36,000 17 and 18-year-old Queensland students. Fun! The drinking age is also 18 in Australia, so that added to the chaos. We decided that Schoolies is basically the Australian high school equivalent of college spring break in America. Luckily, all the schoolies had to wear yellow wrist bands that allowed them to gain access to the beach area where the schoolies concerts and events were going on in the evening and through the night. We did get confused as schoolies a couple a times, but our accents quickly changed that.

This is a picture of the entrance to Surfer's Paradise beach and all the schoolies. We definitely observed Australia's youth at their finest :)

But despite all this, we had a pretty quiet afternoon at the beach enjoying the cold Pacific Ocean. All ten of us went to dinner at an outdoor cafe and spent the entire dinner people watching. Besides the schoolies, there was also a huge bar crawl going on for the non-schoolies people, or toolies as the locals call them. There were lots of police and hundreds of civilians that volunteer their time to supervise the schoolies and keep them safe. In order to avoid the majority of them, we ended up going to a really nice bowling bar that didn't permit schoolies. We enjoyed bowling, and my Baylor bowling class definitely paid off. We also fought our way through the masses to go to an Irish pub that overlooked the schoolies entrance so we could people watch. It was definitely entertaining to say the least.

We were trying to show off our nice outfits and bowling shoes in the first picture, but it doesn't show the shoes.

Thankfully, our hotel monitored who came into the hotel so schoolies who weren't staying there couldn't go to other floors. But someone did set the fire alarm off at 3am Sunday morning, and we were on the 17th floor of the hotel. The front desk came on over the PA as we were about to leave our room telling us everything was fine, but they had to repeat the entire message in Japanese and again in both languages 15 min later.

This is the gorgeous view of the mountains from our hotel balcony.

Sunday morning Kimberly, Jennifer, and I took surfing lessons at Cheyne Horan School of Surf which is owned by a world champion surfer. The group we had was really diverse with college-age students from New Zealand, Israel, Belgium, France, Switzerland, and the Philippines. After a 2 hour lesson, I was able to stand up completely once and ride into shore on my stomach and knees the rest of the time. It was definitely a lot of fun and a lot of work! All 3 of us woke up the next morning with sore arm muscles. Needless to say, I have a lot of respect for professional surfers now.

Since it was the Baylor vs. Texas A&M game that day back home, I took a Sic 'Em picture on the beach with my Baylor shirt.

Last weekend was a lot of fun getting to hang out as a big group and spend some time at the beach. The sunscreen here is amazing, and I only ended up with the top of my head and my ears a little sunburned, even though the same couldn't be said for everyone in our group.

This weekend we are all heading up the coast to Cairns, which is known as the gateway to the Great Barrier Reef. Tomorrow we are taking an all day reef tour complete with snorkeling and visiting a few islands. This is probably the weekend I have been looking forward to the most. We will also hopefully be visiting the Daintree Rainforest on Sunday.

I hope everyone is enjoying their Thanksgiving weekend and Black Friday!

Happy Thanksgiving!

Even though the date says Wednesday, it is currently mid-afternoon on Thursday. I got to teach a Thanksgiving lesson today to my students. I had "story time" with my 13-year olds, and I have never seen them more quiet and attentive. I also played a Thanksgiving Jeopardy game with them, and they got really into it, especially in the end for final jeopardy when they wagered their money. My students had never played Jeopardy before, but I think I got them hooked. During English I had them create hand turkeys to tell what they are thankful for, and we are going to make a mural out of them in our room later.

With the teachers, our professor provided sweets for morning tea, and then Jennifer and I with the help of our wonderful roommate Kimberly cooked Thanksgiving dinner. We cooked 2 turkey roasts, mashed potatoes, and I made green bean casserole. (I hope you are proud, Mom) The teachers really enjoyed it, and it was fun to decorate the teacher's lounge with pumpkins and pilgrims. Apparently no one has had green bean casserole over here, so we had lots of compliments and were asked for the recipe :)

So, despite being thousands of miles away and missing my family, I have had an eventful Thanksgiving so far. Since we can't watch a football game, we are going to see a cricket game after school. The teachers have spent the last 2 days explaining it to Jennifer and me, so hopefully it will make some sense! Apparently cricket test matches can last for 5 days, and sometimes no one even wins! Its no wonder our teachers tell us everyone uses the games as an excuse to drink.

I hope everyone has a wonderful turkey day!

HAPPY THANKSGIVING!

Australian Schools

My teacher finally gave me his log in to use the school computers, so I can finally use the internet for free instead of paying to use one at an internet cafe clear in downtown. This post is just about my schools since I forgot my memory card reader to upload pictures. I can use this post for part of my final reflection to compare American and Australian schools, so I figured I might as well post it so my Waco students and anyone else can read it.

I survived my first week of teaching. I'm teaching Year 8 students at Whites Hill State College.

First of all, public schools in Australia don't have air conditioning which has taken some getting used to. We have several fans in the classroom and all the windows open so it's not too bad during class as long as there's a breeze. It's been in the low 30s Celcius here (which is in the high 80s in Fahrenheit). The only problem is fans are sometimes turned off as punishment when students are loud because the teacher can't hear over the fan noise.

These are pictures of my classroom.

Students also all wear uniforms which are interesting. They don't seem very attractive to me, but since every student in Australia wears them, everyone looks the same. My students wear the middle school uniform on the far left and far right, and all students wear the polo on sports day. Girls are not allowed to wear make-up, jewelry other than earring studs, and fingernail polish, and long hair must be pulled back because of the heat.


Another interesting thing about Australian schools is that parents are responsible for getting their children to and from their school. We take a 25 min bus ride from South Bank to Camp Hill everyday for school, and there are always students from all over the city ridng the bus and at the bus stops. In the morning the elementary girls get dropped off in front of their school, and Jennifer and I get off at the next stop for our school. But for us, we have a 10-15 min walk down a huge hill and back up it to get to school. The walk is really nice in the morning, but it's awful in the heat of the afternoon. I'm really starting to appreciate my car and having air conditioning.

Australian schools also have crazy time schedules. Teachers at the middle school teach all subjects except electives, and they only teach most subjects twice a week. Students have the same teacher for almost all subjects and attend electives with their normal class, more like elementary schools in America. School starts at 8:45, we have morning tea or little lunch for 20 min, lunch for an hour, and the day ends at 3pm. I'm starting to enjoy having 2 lunch times during the day. I missed morning tea one morning to help with the Year 11 triathalon, and I was starving by lunch time. My students also have 1 or 2 mandatory electives everyday. So far, I have attended music, PE swimming, Art, Japanese, Manual Arts, Home Ec, and Sports. So although I only teach math in the states all day, everyday, I have only worked with Math in my classroom 3 days out of 6 for about 3 hours total. The middle school coordinator did say this is all changing next year to help students meet national and international standards in math and science.

Sorry that this update is all about school, but I thought some people might be curious about the differences between Australian and American schools since that is the reason why I'm here. Tomorrow I'll try to update and post pictures from my weekend at Gold Coast.

G'day mate!

Hey everyone!

I decided to write on a blog instead of sending everyone obnoxiously long emails, and this way it's also easier for me to upload pictures.

Right now I'm at a little internet cafe in downtown Brisbane, so this is just a quick update since I'm paying to use the computer.

After 29 hours on a plane or in an airport we finally made it to our hotel in Brisbane. Our apartment is located in South Bank which is just across the river from downtown. Our apartment is on the 6th floor and the balcony has a gorgeous view of the city.

On Sunday afternoon we took a taxi to Lone Pine Koala Sanctuary which is the oldest koala sanctuary in the world and one of the few places where you can hold a koala. I got to cuddle a koala and handfeed grey kangaroos as well as see a variety of Australian animals.